Another very very important video, I hope people can keep watching this so get answers to very new problems of working within the DAW. This problem really did not exist in the 80s,90s etc because everything was done through a mixing desk, and this video is really showing you all the different ways. Thank You.
exactly, but who makes an affordable analog 8 bus mixer now? and even if they were plentiful we'd still need the physical DAW inputs. Actually I just thought of another solution, buy 3 old ADAT units cheap, with knackered tape transports, but they will still act as audio interfaces if you connect them to something like that RME Digiface USB.👍
This was a great video...i totally didn’t expect all of the expert advice just an opinion on high channel count interfaces but it turned out to be a little mini masterclass. 👍
👍 cheers mate. subscribe, cos there's plenty more where that came from coming down the pipe soon - I'm doing a rebuild of my room with a full hardware setup: (mixer, rack fx, multitrack, synths, samplers etc) dragging all the old hardware out of storage, and then we start doing some traditional sound recording tutorials etc 👍
@@dancetech Excellent. May I ask a couple question, what are your favorite monitors and converters for studio and, what do you think about the SSL BIG SIX? Thanks.
@@bigdap100 Converters i couldn't give monkeys about that tbh. All that matters is the music/composition/arrangement, which is why not very interesting bands/artists might spend grands recording in a top studio setup & turn out some music nobody really wants to hear, Yes it's pristine & clean & clear etc, but it's just crap. while millions of kids are listening to some grime or hiphop done on a cheap laptop at home using fruity loops or whatever (yes, probably with the vocal then tracked in a decent studio & some decent mastering done) or some or grunky garage rock done in a lower end studio. i go for the sound, not the clarity etc, but yes I can absolutely appreciate Dark Side Of The Moon or whatever too. everything has a sound at the end of the day. Monitors? blimey, Well I LOVE my vintage 1970's Richard Allen Pavanes. favourite little ones would be the Presonus Eris 5". amazing bass & tightness & smoothness of the bass, even at very very low levels,. they just blew me away. Someone I work with on sessions has a pair and every time I visit they blow me away all over again. incredible speakers, seriously! and nobody ever talks about Presonus speakers. It'd be interesting to hear their bigger ones. Bigger speakers? Old Tannoy 12" duel concentric every time. best speakers I ever heard? Beyond all the pro studios with all the usual top end Eastlake/Westlake/ATC/Quested/Urei etc etc? I think they were vintage Martin Logan electrostatics, not sure, but def not Quads. I met this wealthy startup investor (one of his investments was 'Eagle E-Types', super cool!) & he had this MEGA stereo setup, with two massive valve power amps, a huge 5 or 6 U 19" rack amp which was only the amp for the moving coil cartridge on the turntable!!! & another massive 5 or 6 U pre-amp which then fed the two massive valve amps. Those then fed the electrostatics. So he put on Sgt Pepper (vinyl) and left me to it to listen. VERY VERY strange experience. At first it sounded dull and lifeless & flat... and i was like.. Pft, this is really dull & un-dynamic etc, but then after a few minutes you get used to it and start to listen and you just gradually sunk further in & in & in to the music & seriously, once you got used to it it was suddenly like being in the actual recording room with the band, you could hear the envelope of the reverb decaying inside the music and the movement of the compressor envelopes etc & every last nuance of little sounds picked up in the recording , .. it was mind blowing. Anyhoos. I complimented his stereo & he said he knows the Pink Floyd guys (Nick Mason I think was his mate) and every time they did a studio mix they'd come round to try it on his system just to be sure lol
@@dancetech 👍thanks for the response, sometimes I try to understand the personality of engineers and musicians by asking them the gear that they like. I am similar to you in that I prioritize the song over the technicalities, I like dirty sounding music b/c in my era the mixtape was cherished by those who could get their hands on them. Do you have any opinions about the SSL BIG SIX, it looks cool but it’s a different workflow.
@@bigdap100 sorry forgot to reply. The BIG SIX seems quite good value given that it essentially behaves as a multi i/o audio interface with SSL mic pres & Line pre inputs as well as equalisers & compressor and can also handle various routing and foldback management & would therefore be a decent unit for a higher-end production type suite rather than a full-on multitrack style studio setup. Depends what you want it for I suppose because working with any modern DAW how many of those features would you actually use beyond the pre-amps? Like why would you route daw channels back to the BIG SIX for mixing? Not sure I would.
This was great. Thank you. I'm in my late fifties, and a retired software engineer, but was a keyboard player in a rock band back in the day, and did a two year full-time recording engineering college degree back then as well. These days, I do a ton of rock style singing (quite good actually), and we've done a lot of karaoke over the past ten years or so, which is an absolute blast through a great sounding system. Problem is, with a very very few exceptions, you never get a decent sounding system to sing through. Most people who host know less than zero about sound. Anyway, now I want to set up a home studio, as well as possibly getting into the karaoke hosting scene with the kind of sound I think people would appreciate. I was looking at the Behringer XR18 to use as my interface at home, and then I could also use it to do karaoke or other live applications if that materializes. A used XR18 in Canada (where I live) goes for about 1000.00cdn (600.00gbp) so even used, this will be somewhat of an investment vs a small dedicated interface. I'm still trying to decide which way to go. All I want to do immediately is learn Reaper, buy an SM7B, and do vocal covers of my favourite rock songs and post them. Anyway, this was very helpful to me. Cheers!
I've been using reaper for about 6 months now, and it's really a pleasure to use. Very rarely crashes, efficient and powerful, and updates are a breeze.
I think the XR18 is a great choice, I've got 2 of them. I used it as a portable digital mixer for my keys, vocals, guitars, and drums for my rock and pop cover bands. At home, I'm using them as audio interfaces with 18 inputs over USB. No latency, great audio quality, easy setup, and standalone... so no need to turn on the computer when just using your instruments in the studio. Big bonuses too: per channel, you get EQ, compression, and there are 4 FX busses with loads of FX types to choose from. It has MIDI for connection to your keys if that's your thing. Reaper hookup is quick and easy, plenty of video tutorials for that. It really is a great economical and quality solution.
Food for thought indeed. I've been away from recording for a while and returning with set parameters in mind. I use a Behringer Audio interface now and given the choices so wonderfully shown here by your good self, I'm thinking of a mix of units. It's all about getting stuff to last for a decade or so. Have just spent £795 on a Workstation pc build. I studied sound engineering at university but took other career choices - I needed to pay the rent and liked sleep too; I kept my late nights for gigs and or studio work adding drum tracks to other people stuff - unofficial cheap session player. That was all over 9 years ago, I need to catch up. This will help nicely. Concise information as required thanks. Like given.
Perfect video, straight to the point and much more ! I came here to add a bit more inputs to my home studio, but after this video I want to invest in PA and stagebox and record everyone 😍
Good video! I recently opted for the ADAT variant. Almost all the parts were second-hand and correspondingly cheap. A Scarlett 18i20 Gen 1 and an old Behringer ADA8000 are the centerpieces. Add a few cheap microphones and you can record the whole band live in the rehearsal room on individual tracks... We have 7 microphones on the drums, 2 on the guitar amps, a bass via D.I. and 4 vocal microphones, leaving 2 channels for other things... It's a mini studio in the rehearsal room, so to speak... good enough for demos and possibly more. ...and overdubs are also possible without any problems... Total cost including cables, microphones for drums and amplifiers etc pp: about 1200 euros. That's good enough for a punk band ;)
This is very informative video with all the details needed for anyone who is starting in studio recording, or looking to expand his gear. Great work dude.
I have the Soundcraft UI24R, and one reason why I bought it is because the mixing software runs on a web browser instead of an app. That means anyone can log in and run it. Put a password on it, and then you can grant limited access to the musicians, such as the ability to turn themselves up in their monitor mix. It can also record into a daw and a USB drive the same time.
I have found that the internal wireless works great when using the 5GHz band. Ditto on not having to download an app and being able to assign privileges.
Gotta watch out for some of the details with the digital mixers. As an example, some only work with Apple products, which is why I didn't choose Mackie! The UI24r runs only at 48khz (not 44.1khz) and doesn't use an app. You connect to the mixer with a browser and the mixer sends HTML5 code back to the connected device. Neat... as your app will never get out of date with OS upgrades as there is no app. I use a MOTU PCIe424 card giving me 92 inputs to my DAW. Yes, my MIDI rig is that big, but I also have the UI24r and QSC TM30 which has the advantage of a built-in touchscreen. Solid video. I'm sure many folks are now going down this route...
Thank you for bringing the Digiface USB to my attention! I was looking for a way to get a shitload of DC-coupled ins and outs to the DAW for interfacing with a modular system, and this looks like the best solution since PreSonus discontinued the Quantum 4848.
Great video. Super informative. Definitely will help me in researching what I need for tracking drums without constantly moving inputs around. I'd be careful about using the term "tablet" to describe a mixer. You will confuse yanks like me with that. A tablet is like an iPad. A mixer is a mixer.
"A mixer is a mixer"? If you look at the rack mount "mixers" that he showed, it's plain to see that they are missing ALL the controls. The "tablet" is how you operate the mixer. The tablet IS the mixer. It's what has ALL the controls. And yes, It's an ipad.
Behringer have absorbed some great names and come a long long way! Midas was just the first, then Tannoy, TC Helcion and more. Plus many who started recording should have had to wait a couple more years if it weren't for Behringer. Now the Wing, stage boxes, and the monitors designed by Karl Klawitter, (KRK) and according to him , his best work yet. They are easily as good as anything near that price too, the sub is a great deal.
Great video! 24 analog in/out for roughly 100 quid here by three PCI cards - I know this video was about USB and really great it is so! Took a few years to get the third card with shoelaces, could have gotten three cards for 100 EUR but typed the seller email wrong at first so he had time to sell one of them. M-Audio Delta 1010LT doesn't seem to die, LOL. Using zero budget Linux computer (4 core AMD, 4 GB RAM, used 2 GHz dual core / 2GB before) with Ubuntu Studio and Reaper. It's well enough for rec & mix & master with all the required mixing plugins. Not really using plugins for synths, got hardware (avoiding "plugin available for Win/Mac" type of issues or emulation/VST bridges horror). Oh, the desk is Behringer MX8000 (24+24 channel fully analog desk) with direct channel outs going into the audio cards, four last taken from two stereo groups, so I can press buttons to choose what to record via those last channels instead of using a patchbay or reconnecting cables.
The Behringer pre-amps are crazy good for the price - I've heard a lot worse in local studios.. Really nice clean sound for vocals, guitar and bass (never tried them with anything else..)
I was very much entertained! I am happy the XR18 was in the video. It is from Behringer and I do not buy anything else from them but this mixer is phenomenal in my small studio! Thanks.
For a lot of people a Behringer RX1602 is all they'd need as a submix with a USB interface to computer. Plus it's stereo/mono switchable and you could stay well under £200
that advice at the end was all i needed to get motivated to set up for corporate events. i was lucky enough to be able to buy a pair of old Presonus Studio Live 16 desks which can he daisy chained for a 32 track monster. All i need is a firewire card for my pc to do multitrack recordings for bands. ill to find spme pa speakers from an auction or something
i already own that behringer interface as well as the ultragain digital so if the firewire doesnt work, ill patch it to the track outputs. 16 channels should be enough. i like your idea of marketing to bands for a rehearsal recording. that way i dont need my own studio.
this was great and that's exactly what i'm going to do, i have my mains, subs and amps ready to go, just need an xr18, some fold backs, and the most expensive part - a van to carry it all in
There really is a major gap in the market for multi input usb interfaces that don't waste space and money on unnessasary pre amps eq's and physical outputs for producers that just want to multitrack a big rig of line level synthesizers.
There is, but i suppose any company that makes a usb out pre-amp rack unit wants to maximise possible customer requirements to maximise potential market/sales, so they want a mic pre on all inputs etc - one product I left out is the ESI: www.thomann.de/gb/esi_u168_xt.htm - 16 line ins (plus some mic pre's on the front if required) for 385 GBP - ESI are VERY good, and have always had some of the best drivers on the market because the company was originally created as RIDI GMBH way back in the late 1990's & early 2000's writing drivers for other companies products
I have 2x Zoom R24 devices which double as a daw controller and output soundcard. That gives me 16 inputs (apart from 16 midi channels). You need a mammoth processor (6 or 8 core multi-threader)and mammoth memory and a separate SSD for the OS (Windows etc (standard SSD with do for system)) and the recording SSD (which needs to be NVME 3000MB/s minimum); especially if you are using VST instruments with your daw. I can get 96KHZ 24Bit 1024 samples per second (which gives 192 KHZ right and left output). Reaper is the more core and memory efficient DAW although you need to have a little experience with reaper to set up correctly.
Be care ful with the Midas/Behringer comparisons. If you've watched any videos of folks looking under the hood, the electronics used inside are very different between the two. I used to use a Soundcraft Ui24R, which was wonderful. I currently use a Presonus 32SC, which is magic. Especially if you use StudioOne as your DAW.
You might have a preamp preference but there’s very little advantage to running 96 khz over 48. You buy a larger frequency range at the expense of more data and power. Might be useful for minimizing latency? Maybe. In the past there was a kind of difference but it was mainly driven by filter quality/differences over actual sample rate advantages. Nowadays any adc worth its price has good filters. You literally can’t hear above 22 khz and most likely can’t hear above 17 khz or lower. Hell, a sample rate of 24 khz would probably handle most music handily. Maybe a few more khz to get a little bit more high end, but… Even for digital effects unless you’re dealing with some crazy techniques you mostly care about quality per sample more so than sample rate. Now there some benefits but they’re largely not all that useful. Certainly in quality terms 48 khz suffices, however. The choice depends on some rather specific circumstances.
Wow, what an amazing summary, this is exactly what I needed! Wish I had found this sooner, it would have saved me a lot of research… Thanks a lot (albeit belated)! I have several synths, a drum machine, tape deck etc., so I really need some headroom when it comes to inputs. I'm currently using an 8-track interface (M-Audio M-Track Eight) that doesn't offer ADAT, so apart from switching entirely to one of the options in your video, the most cost-effective solution seems to be a small separate mixer with, say, 16 inputs whose stereo sum is then sent to two of the M-Track inputs (Behringer RX1602 V2 seems the best option), leaving me with 22 usable inputs. What do you think? I'm also considering to add a multichannel DI box to the setup since I get a lot of (ground?) noise from my unbalanced connections despite fairly short cables.
I use predominantly midi gear, old hardware samplers/synths/drum machines/pedals/old rack fx and outboard and work mostly in the midi domain with analogue audio. Bought two Motu 828mk2’s for £120 and a used yamaha 02R for £100 (to patch in lots of my analogue gear) with two ADAT digital cards of 8 tracks each so I can simultaneously output 16 lightpipe channels of 44.1 or 8 tracks of 96k digital audio straight into logic 8 via FireWire with no latency and amazing sound quality. Have to word clock all the digital gear mind, but it sounds so much better for it…. My 02R mixes sound way way better than my DAW mixes.
Wow, I wish i'd come across something like this 3 years ago. Starting off from having a DAW at home with a simple 2 channel interface, I ended up with a fairly flexible 20 at once input mobile recording set up, by linking 2 Audient ASP880's to an Audient iD44, alog with some outboard processors, patchbays in two rack cases. It all works fine. The Audient gear is good, and the ASPs offer send and returns, so I can bypass the Audient pre-amps where required, or patch in other hardware, but even though I bought some of it secondhand, it was still pricey, compared to some of these options
Im useing this setup with the dirct outs from my 2442 . you can also {half plug from your inserts} ie. only plug ts cable halfway into your insert jacks usually right under inputs on most decent mixers . this will let you run live while still captureing and not having to fiddle with all the plugging
i wish they made a doubled up version of the RME digiface USB that could take 8 ins/outs of ADAT for a total of 64in 64out. you can get all sorts of "the driver doesn't work anymore so it's useless" firewire or usb interfaces that can be reconfigured for standalone use as A/D boxes. from what i've heard RME's drivers are rock solid.
if you want the really high channel counts, up in the double digits, your only options are basically the network-based standards dante and AVB, and those start to stretch the limits of what some DAWs allow, some can only take up to 128 or even 99 channels of i/o. and that's all pretty unnafordable for anyone who isn't a fulltime studio with an accountant.
03:11 I got these. I work with them greatly. Not any issue on any DAW and Davinci/Première. BTW the inputs are 18. 16 analogue and 2 SPDIF on the UMC1820 itself. Latency is very low (on my system) as well.
The Behringer X32 also has 6 1/4 balanced Aux Ins and 6 Aux Outs and with its almost unlimited routing options you can use the Aux Outs as Ins giving you 12 more Input possibilities.
Yeah, no need to make up a bunch of cables like he said. I own the x32 compact and it does everything I need. Live shows and recording. It's a lot smaller than the full x32 and with a DL32 stage box you still get 32 in's and 16 out's. No regrets after 3 years.
Got my X32 Rack with an S16 extension snake in my studio. 32 I/O channels plus a few different connection type options - TRS, RCA, XLR. Also, you get at least six headphone mixes, easily customizable, controllable with an iPhone or an iPad or whatever, and full channel effects (EQ, comp, gate, time delay) on every single channel going in all directions. What more could you ask for?Being short on money, this allowed me to sell off a bunch of my old, hugely expensive and space-eating analog gear and put a whole bunch of money back in the bank. I know the purists will rage, but my recordings still sound great. I welcome anyone who wants to buy all my analog gear back for me for free.
the x32 also gives you 16 fx units that includes a la2a and a 1776 among a number of other useful tools. You can also get 48 channels in/out with a KT AES50 to USB converter. the X32 also comes in a rack version. Wait did we also skip over AVB and Dante?
what about making aggregate audio devices by chaining multiple audio interfaces together? That would be another cool way to get more inputs very cost effective too!
You could do that, but making an aggregate device of 2 or 3 x 8 input audio interfaces would cost more than the ADAT solutions in this video because you'd be buying 2 or 3 full featured 8-input interfaces which cost more than the adat expander units
im just like for a 8 to 16 track mixer that will give me 8 to 16 separate recording tracks in my DAW, i can't seem to find anything for like under a grand. First solution might work for me, definitely watching the rest of this video.
Really well done video and great information...Super well done *. I have the opposite problem as I would like to mix using my Analog 32 Channel mixer (in a studio environment and use my multiple vintage outboard gear units if needed) and I so far have not found an inexpensive solution to getting 32 physical outputs from the DAW to my analog mixer TRS line inputs. (My DAW is on a PC Laptop)... * I only can find units like the Antelope Orion 32+, Ferrofish A32 (or two Frerrofish Pulse 16s) or RME (to name a few) and these are really expensive units. I believe I am going to go with the Antelope Orion Gen 4 (at $3295 USD) as I can get 32 channels I/O over the USB connector. If you have any suggestions that would be great. Again, excellent video. the best one I've seen on multiple options. Thanks. Phil NYC / Jersey Shore area
Thanks Great video as always, I wanted to bring up a point that might not be obvious, The Tascam Model 24 and the Soundcraft 22MTK both act in a similar fashion - the USB channels are routed before the mixer, and so when you record none of the EQ or processing is recorded. Very annoying and means it's hard to get the same sound on disk as in the room. It put me off both of them.
oh right, but surely the idea is that it behaves like with any other 'real' multitrack studio. You record raw stems to the record part of the chain, adding monitoring fx & monitoring eq which are NOT recorded to the multitrack stems. Then on playback the record track routes to the same input channel used for the source input & thus any eq and processing is applied and will sound identical to the input sound you heard as you recorded and you can then do a final mix, CHANGING those values if you want to which are NOT hard baked into the actual recorded stems. That is how real multi-tracking is done otherwise whatever eq/fx you added on tracking cant be changed afterwards on final mix... isn't that what they have given?
@@dancetech yes I see your point, but I wanted to capture the live sound of my jamming on hardware, drum machines etc, which sounded great in the room, but then resulted in underwhelming stems. You can't even turn up the input gain for example. That probably is the way the pro's do it but doubt they would use these mixers lol 😆
so when you play back the stems from the DAW doesn't it send each individual stem to the same channel it was recorded from? and doesn't that sound identical to the sound when recording? if not, weird. it should. Maybe i didn't read the manual enough and maybe both of those mixers only play back a stereo feed to the mixer from DAW, but i'm sure i read they send the stems back to the input channels in the other direction. no?
Yeah I missed that one. I think at the time of this video the 2 x behringers worked out cheaper (new) for 16 inputs via USB/ADAT... Now the prices have risen A LOT... ESI are very good usually, always have the best windows drivers.
I had a couple of PA's but had no transport so missed out on a lot of dosh. Could've been on over £200 a gig. As you say the local fair do can earn a few shekels too, corporate do's can pay really nice dough - it goes to the company to get tax loss for. There were a lot of small units going about just before covid that fell by the wayside, sadly. There are lots of cheaper options of this gear on FB marketplace because of it.
Good video! Always to know what could be a good alternative for the day my Motu 424 system breaks down. Although I'm a a bit spoiled with this system having 96ch in and 96 ch out. Almost use all of them as well, but could do with less if I start using patchpanels. But the convinience though.
